The town of the 100 voivodes, of the Blue Stones, of the winds, of the textiles, of the Sliven pearl rakya, of the Peach Valley, of the unforgettable Damian Damyanov. The poet who was born in Sliven, said about his hometown "... the town that brought together both old and new, cobblestones and asphalt, ancient verandah and today's multi-storey building,... not only brought together winds and rivers at the same time (hence its name), but also brought together past with present, today's joy with past sorrow".
Do you know what the old name of Sliven is?
The answer is not one though. There are several old names of the town known to us today and they chronologically follow its history.
Tuida
In Roman and early Byzantine times (2nd – 4th centuries) in the area of Hisarlukka, in a low hill in the northern part of today's town, remains of a settlement from the Late Iron Age were discovered. Then the town was called Tuida (also Tsoida, Suida). There is an assumption that the origin of the name is Gothic. From Gothic "thiuda" means "people". (Ivanov, I.T. "On a quest to the Bulgarian ethnonym").
Slivno (Savulen, Silimno, Stilvnos)
By these names the town is mentioned in medieval Byzantine literature.
Istilifunos
The town was recorded under the name Istilifunos by the Arab geographer Al Idrisi in 1153.
Sliven
The name Sliven is found in "History of Slavonic Bulgaria" (18th century) by Paisii Hilendarski. There are two assumptions about the origin of the name. The first is that Sliven is of New Bulgarian/Slavic origin and has no connection with the medieval "Slivno" and its derivatives. Today's name derives from the verb "merge (bg: slivane)" in the sense of "infuse, flow, collect", i.e. the name is associated with the idea that three rivers merge on the territory of the town: Asenovska, Novoselska and Manastirska, and that in this place the mountain meets the field or the sky meets the earth. According to the second interpretation, the name Sliven means "passage." The town is located at the beginning of an important high mountain pass that leads in two directions. One leads to the town of Elena and Veliko Tarnovo (the old Bulgarian Zhelezna Vrata (en: Iron Gates) Pass, later "Demir Kapu", today’s "Vratnik"), the other leads to the town of Kotel and Northeastern Bulgaria.